Like many concern IT professionals, I am eager with Oracle future plan on Sun products after it's acquisition announcement on 20th April 2009. After nearly 6 months, both companies still remain as 2 separate entities. Hence, lots of unanswered quesitons popping up in the air. As a result, Oracle issued an Overview and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) document to address the market concerns. Here are some of the extractions from the document:

Delivering increased investment and innovation in Java
Oracle plans to accelerate investment in the Java platform for the benefit of customers and the Java community. Java is one of the computer industry’s best-known brands and the Java platform is one of the industry’s most widely deployed technologies. Oracle has been a leader in the Java community since the inception of the Java programming language and already has the world’s largest investment in the Java platform, which provides the foundation for its Oracle Fusion Middleware products and its next-generation enterprise applications. Oracle plans to not only broaden and accelerate its own investment in the Java platform, but also plans to increase the commitment to the community that helps make Java an ubiquitous, innovative platform unified around open standards.

What are Oracle’s plans for the GlassFish Enterprise (Java EE) Server after the transaction closes?
Oracle plans to continue evolving GlassFish Enterprise Server, delivering it as the open source reference implementation (RI) of the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specifications, and actively supporting the large GlassFish community. Additionally, Oracle plans to invest in aligning common infrastructure components and innovations from Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server to benefit both Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server customers.

What are Oracle’s plans for NetBeans?
Oracle has a strong track record of demonstrating commitment to choice for Java developers. As such, NetBeans is expected to provide an additional open source option and complement to the two free tools Oracle already offers for enterprise Java development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. While Oracle JDeveloper remains Oracle’s strategic development tool for the broad portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware products and for Oracle’s next generation of enterprise applications, developers will be able to use whichever free tool they are most comfortable with for pure Java and Java EE development: JDeveloper, Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, or NetBeans.

What are Oracle’s plans for MySQL?
Oracle plans to spend more money developing MySQL than Sun does now. Oracle expects to continue to develop and provide the open source MySQL database after the transaction closes. Oracle plans to add MySQL to Oracle’s existing suite of database products, which already includes Berkeley DB, an open source database. Oracle also currently offers InnoDB, an open source transactional storage engine and the most important and popular transaction engine under MySQL. Oracle already distributes MySQL as part of our Enterprise Linux offering.

What is Oracle’s plan for OpenOffice?
Oracle has a history of developing complete, integrated, and open products, making integration quicker and less costly for our customers. Based on the open ODF standard, OpenOffice is expected to create a compelling desktop integration bridge for our enterprise customers and offers consumers another choice on the desktop. After the transaction closes, Oracle plans to continue developing and supporting OpenOffice as open source. As before, some of the larger customers will ask for extra assurances, support, and enterprise tools. For these customers we expect to offer a typical commercial license option.

How does Oracle support open source?
Oracle has long been committed to developing, supporting, and promoting open source. Oracle has been, and continues to be, committed to offering choice, flexibility, and a lower cost of computing for end users. Oracle has invested significant resources in developing, testing, optimizing and supporting open source technologies such as Linux, PHP, Apache, Eclipse, Berkeley DB, and InnoDB. Oracle continues to embrace and offer open source solutions as a viable choice for development and deployment. More information about Oracle’s support of open source can be found at
oracle.com/opensource.

My Australian ETA (Electronic Travel Authority System) application was not a smooth ride initially. However, thanks to the prompt reply from Internet ETAS Support team, my issue was resolved and I managed to complete the transaction in less than 10 minutes. The application process was pretty straightforward with only minimal required information needed to be entered on the webpages. I clicked on the Apply for ETA button and proceeded to enter the required information such as Passport Number, Nationality, Date of Birth, Sex, Country of Birth, Passport Expiry Date, Issuing State, Date of Issue, Issuing Authority, Family Name and Given Names. Then, I selected the Visitors visa as required and proceeded to the Payment webpage. Once the payment was processed successfully, I received a webpage that confirmed my ETA application had been successful. As I included my e-mail address as part of the entered information, I received 2 e-mails automatically, namely Payment Receipt from iVisa Services‏ and Application for ETA for Australia. That's the wonder of internet!

Google Analytics is a web analytical tool that enables us to discover where a website visitors come from, what webpages they visit, how long they stay, what they do, what makes them leave and where do they go and many more others. Like Google Adsense Sign Up, Google Analytics needs a Google Account.

Google Analytics New Account Sign Up is divided into 4 areas, namely General Information, Contact Information, Accept User Agreement and Add Tracking. Simply fill in all the required information and Copy&Paste the Javascript code into the website that needs to be tracked. More websites can be added for tracking once the Google Analytics account has been successfully set up via the Add new profile link> Add a Profile for a new domain selection option.

Once the Javascript code has been successfully added into the website, you may view the Tracking Status under the Google Analytics Settings> Profile Settings option. A successful message (Analytics has been successfully installed and data is being gathered now) will be shown.

Yesteday, I received a phone call from McDelivery on my earlier feedback. They wanted to verify my feedback and to ensure the quality of their McDelivery services. In the end, he offered to resend the order. I received the order in about 35 minutes. It was followed by a phone call by a different personnel to check on my delivery. It was great that McDelivery took the efforts to look into the Customer Feebacks and followed up with actions. However, I think McDelivery may look into better ways to ensure the order reaches the customers in better condition. Most of the time, the food were not warm, the french fries were soggy and the drinks were spilt into the plastic wrapper. Nevertheless, I look forward to the future improvements by McDelivery.

Internet surfers experienced difficulty in accessing all Google Blogger's blogs including the Google Blogger Dashboard. Forums and blogs were flooded with messages asking for help. Google put up a quick and short message (We're investigating an outage on blogger.com. Thanks for your patience as we work to resolve this) in Twitter informing all surfers. After the message was posted for merely 2 hours, the issue was resolved with a new message (We have fully restored Blogger functionality. Thanks for your patience). Great work to Google for the speedy recovery.

Malaysia Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced Malaysia Day as national public holiday. Hence, the first Malaysia Day Public Holiday would commence in 2010. East Malaysia, namely Sabah and Sarawak joined Federation Malaya and Singapore as Federation of Malaysia on 16th Sept 1963. Malaysians would have double independence celebration starting next year, namely Malaysia Day and Merdeka Day (National Day). The announcement is definitely in line with the Prime Minister's 1Malaysia spirit.

I won prizes for the HP Virtual Tech Museum Gallery Contest. I received an e-mail from Cheryl informing me of the good news. I had to read the e-mail 3 times to confirm that it was not a joke. I won 2 prizes, a unit of HP TouchSmart IQ300 and a HP Pocket Media Drive PD3200 for the Overall Regional Winner and the Malaysia Oldest Device respectively. I was in cloud 9 for the whole day after receiving the good news. I replied the e-mail immediately with my details and collection date as I would have to pick up the prizes personally at the Hewlett-Packard (M) Sdn Bhd, HP Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Now, I am eagerly waiting for an official letter from HP for the prizes collection.